I'm brand new to CRH (only halfway through my 2nd box of pennies) but I've discovered that I rather enjoy tearing down each roll more slowly - pulling out and inspecting each coin individually instead of dumping the entire contents of the roll and sifting through the resultant pile. I feel that this method of search shows a certain amount of 'deference' for the coins in general but also in particular (as I'm hoping to find a high quality error and would like to avoid negatively affecting its condition through careless handling). Also... much like the anticipation of Christmas morning... it just seems more fun to spread it out! What say you? How do YOU unroll? Dave in VA Coin Collector in Training
I tend to do 2-3 rolls at a time and sort them by date 1st out of the roll then do a close inspection of any interesting dates that turn up
Yeah I'm curious to see if my 'tortoise wins the race' search method is simply something novices do before they become older, wiser, and impatienter. Thx Mr. Weasel! Dave
All I'm really concerned with when I hunt is pulling out the coppers so I don't really have a method that will help you. I did read a post on the forum recently about a guy that had some sort of board with tubes attached to it, one for each year he wanted to inspect. He had a space in the front if the tube running the length so he could see how full each tube was and remove the pennies from the tubes easily. Once a tube of any particular date was filled he would pull them all out and look through each one and so on.
I'll be very specific...probably too specific. My two penny roll hunting tools are a butter knife and a Sharpie marker. I use the knife to undo one bank-rolled end, then I use the Sharpie to push the pennies out into my hand. My hands are big enough that I can hold all 50 up to the tip of my middle finger and have enough space to count out piles of 10 junk zincs. When I hit copper, they get sorted by date and mint marker. When I get 5 stacks of 10 zincs, they get rolled and put into another box. I live in the sticks and don't have any free coin sorter dump spots, so I have to re-roll. Philly's go right in front of me and Denver's go into rolls stacked on the back of my desk. I keep rows of P & D rolls that stand up on the bank-rolled end that I did not undo. This is a great way to keep things organized (see picture at the end). I live near Baltimore, so probably 95% of loose change is from the Philly mint, which is why D's go right into rolls. I don't count out the rolls of copper dates (except for '82, I count those and report to a guy I found on here who is gathering data related to the number of small vs. large dates). When a roll is "full", it goes in another box and then gets packed away. I've been searching pennies at different levels of intensity for maybe a year and a half or so and I've found over $300 face value of copper and 6 pounds of wheat cents, according to my bathroom scale. It's a surprisingly fun hobby and you'll tweak your methods as you do it, no doubt. Have fun! Here's my battle station:
Interesting - I guess I should have realized that people taking part in a hobby this meticulous would invariably start engineering their own sorting contraptions! Cool... Bsowa - do you look for any errors or wheats as you cull the copper? Thx! Dave
Is there a fellow Thelemite with a particular interest in the Earth suit of the tarot? To clarify the picture, the front row of rolls are Denver's, the middle are Philly's and the back are '68-'74 San Francisco's, Canadian's and stuff that I find interesting (toned, woods, etc.). The eight rolls in the back to the right are 2009 P & D sorted by birth/formative/professional/presidency. The piles of pennies between the rolls and the copper Philly's in the front are '82's separated by date size, mint mark and metal comp.
Sorry 93... I made the mistake of talking about religion at Thanksgiving dinner last week - I won't do that here. Thx for the run-down on the pic of your 'battle station'. I look forward to the day when I will have a station of my own... right now I'm working off the top of the kitchen stove. Dave P.S. Going back through all the coins I searched yesterday after learning about the 1982 DDR!
I use a paint can opener that they give you at home depot when you buy a paint can for unrolling bwr and reusing them.
I have pretty strong thumbnails from about 6 years of sticking them under paper. I remember years ago they would get really sore after awhile. Now they are so tough I don't even get paper cuts. BWR are of course not my favourites to open, CWR are usually much easier. The ones I loathe are the CWR that are heavily scotch taped on the ends - usually very messy to open - like yesterday. But then one of them yesterday produced a 1961 Roosie - so not too much griping.
I pull out all the wheats i find and put them into rolls, and I do look for the errors/varieties that I know of. There are probably A LOT that I am missing, but this is what I look for: 83 ddr, 84 ddo, 95 ddo, and 92 cam. I will also pull out any nice toners I find, but thats only been one so far. Here it is: What else should I be looking for?? Also, I don't know how to determine an rpm so I can't really look for those.
bsowa, when I search through pennies, I usually just pull out coppers and wheats, unless there is a more obvious error, like a blank planchet. I am also starting to collect toners as well.
I rip the crap out of the roll to get the coins out as fast as possible. It's like X-mas . Then I sort coppers, wheats, canadian, 09's, 72's, 82's, 84's, 92's, 98's, 99's, and 00's. After I go through my boxes I weigh the 82's and put the coppers in with the others and the zincs in the dump. Then I look through all the other dates with my loupe. I used to look at 95's but there were just too many per box and I got really sick of looking at them.
My boss hates me because I'll take a whole box and bust them open all at once and sift through them on my shift and buy what I take out. I love busting the paper rolls open like biscuits haha. The plastic ones really get on my last nerve but I like to break them by bending the middles and shoving everything out at once.
